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Visiting Day

By OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR July 12, 2007 6:59 pmJuly 12, 2007 6:59 pm

I went to Visiting Day at my daughters’ day camp this week.

I had a lovely time.

I used some of the mindfulness meditation techniques that I’d learned recently in Yoga Nidra to keep out of my mind thoughts of the two-foot-high stack of papers I was scheduled to go through that day, which was one of exactly nine days I’d set aside for working on my now-two-years-overdue book.

The techniques worked very well. I was present to myself and my daughters, relished the feeling of the cold pool water on my skin, sang along heartily with the camp songs and, when asked to participate in gymnastics, connected so well to my long-betrayed inner child that I found myself cowering behind my daughter Emilie’s back, hoping that, if I dropped my eyes to the floor, I’d become fully invisible.

(As a teenager, I applied for a job as a camp counselor once. Under skills, I put “typing.” Not much has changed.)

I am fortunate to have a profession that, on non-deadline days, doesn’t require me to be in any particular place producing work at any particular time. If I miss a couple of hours of work or even an entire day no one necessarily notices – though my anxiety level is sure to rise and my bank account, if the situation drags on, is sure to dip.

Other people – most people – don’t live their work lives that way.

“My dad promised he’d come,” one of the 7-year-old girls complained, as we crowded together on Emilie’s towel, sharing cookies and Ritz Bits and sandwiches — in that order, unfortunately — at lunchtime. “He always breaks his promises.”

Indeed, he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Max had a story closing that day and was chained to his desk.
“What’s more important to him – work or us?” 10-year-old Julia had cried when I’d told her, the week before, that he wasn’t going to be able to attend.

We were in the car. It was the post-camp-bus-pickup cranky hour, and we were all a bit testy. It was also the end of a work period for me in which I’d been reading a whole lot about family leave – about the 40 percent of Americans who have none; the 50 percent who have no right to sick days; the 25 percent who get no vacation. I let Julia have it.

Don’t you think that Daddy would rather be running around with you in the woods than sitting at his desk in front of a computer screen? I snapped.

I lectured her on the unfairness of judging parents for things that were beyond their control. I lectured her on the injustice of presenting parents with demands that they can’t meet. I peppered her with rhetorical questions: Does the fact that I, with my flexible schedule, can manage to take a day off from work make me a “better” mother than another woman who can’t?

Conversations about parents who break promises or let their kids down or generally make them feel less important than work shouldn’t be common. But they are. I hear snippets of them every time I attend a school event during the workday. And I’m fed up. I’ve just about had it.

But not with the ill-accused parents.

I’ve had it with a culture that willfully refuses to face up to the fact that almost 80 percent of mothers with children beyond pre-school age – and, of course, a much greater percentage of fathers – work. This refusal to face facts, coupled with the ideology of “parental involvement” as a panacea for all social ills, has created a situation in which not only guilt-ridden parents, but children are needlessly suffering.

It doesn’t need to be this way. It only takes a quick look across the Atlantic to see that many other countries have done what’s necessary to grow up and embrace the 21st century. They provide kids with a longer school year, a longer school day and subsidized summer activities. And they consider that a parent’s place is in the home – not in the classroom.

Parental involvement is key for school and life success and truly does need to be encouraged in struggling communities where parents aren’t able to be hands-on enough in their kids’ lives. But that’s simply not an issue for most middle- and upper-middle-class people.

Whatever need these parents have to “be there” for their kids 24/7 (and no one is more guilty of such neediness than me), we’ve got, for the greater good, to counterbalance it against the realization that meeting these needs – constantly – is creating an unfair situation in which some kids are left feeling like second-class citizens. (And if you think that young kids whose parents don’t show up for daytime events don’t feel – at least briefly – like second-class citizens, you’re wrong. They do.)

We need to push back against the trend toward excessive and inappropriate parental involvement that weighs so heavily upon families in certain communities. We should start by requesting – ever so politely – that school events requiring parental participation be scheduled in the evening. Or on weekends. And not too often at that.

Let’s get parents out of their school-aged kids’ 9-to-3 lives. It’s a cost-free solution to one of the major sources of family angst today. And, more globally, let’s grow up as a culture and face reality – so that our kids can grow up less stressfully.

Say amen somebody! When I was attending Fairfield County, Connecticut K-12 in the 70s and 80s (public school thru 8th grade, and private thereafter), parents NEVER came to school during the day, unless perhaps a kid was in mega-big trouble and their mom was visiting the principal. None of us ever felt deprived back then. It never even occurred to anyone that it would be nice to have mom or dad stop by.

By contrast, when my son started kindergarten last fall, also in Fairfield County, the PTA threw a “Welcome/Meet the Teachers” event at 10:00 am on a Tuesday morning. (Guess we all know who was “welcome” there.) This was followed by several family “socials” at 5:30 pm on Fridays — and this in a town in which many parents (whoops, I mean “dads”) commute 1.5 hours into NYC. Then we had the opportunity to come in any Friday morning at 11:00 am to serve as the “guest reader” for the day.

Then we’ve got all the activities that are based on the kids’ family structure. Not just the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards that they have the kids make, which is not only lots of fun for kids with 2 mommies and no daddy or vice versa, and even better for the offspring of single parents, but must’ve been really just ducky for the kid in my son’s class whose mom died suddenly of an allergic reaction just a few weeks before Mother’s Day. We also had a project in which a photo of the child was inset above the caption, “[Child’s name] has [number] brothers, [number] sisters, and [number] pets.” That’s nice for the only child with no pets. And “All About Me” booklets that require photos and discussions of of all the family members. I’m sure a kid being raised by his or her grandma must really enjoy that project — especially when in my town many of the parents interpreted it as an opportunity to imitate a Hannah Anderssen catalog spread. Except for the Mother’s/Father’s Day cards, we had NONE of these “family” projects when I was growing up.

Of course this has everything to do with the Back To the Kitchen movement, and the bizarre ramping up of “parenting” to gaga, toxic levels that goes with it.

In this regard, note the marked contrast with the 70s and 80s, when of course SAHMs represented an even higher proportion of the moms. The difference between then and now is this: Back then the moms stayed home because that was what everyone did, without thinking about it or trying to justify it. But now we have a *reactionary* political movement going on, in which women are being bullied and browbeaten — most spectacularly by other women — into giving up their careers and the power that goes with them. And then, once they do that, they feel incredibly defensive about their supposed “choice.”

So we have all these guilt-trip daytime activities — but NOT just to give SAHMs something to do with their days once their kids start school. NOT just to make them feel important and needed, and as if their sacrifice of their careers was for a good reason. And NOT just to exploit the free labor they provide when volunteering. No, the most important reason why we have all these guilt-trip daytime activities is that they’re A MEANS OF EXERTING SOCIAL PRESSURE on OTHER women to give up their jobs. And it works. How many formerly working SAHMs have I seen — both in print and in person — moaning about how they hated “getting a C+ in everything all the time” and offering this as the primary reason why they quit?

These daytime activities are a lot like that anti-diaper movement that asked everyone to let their babies run around naked and watch for signs of “elimination communication.” Or the breastfeeding-till-college movement. Just try fulfilling the dictates of either of these forms of joined-at-the-hip parenting while working a full-time job.

As a kindergarterner’s parent, and thus a newcomer to this school system, I must confess that last year I wasn’t brave enough to speak up about this issue. So thanks for giving me the courage to do so in September. I’ve got another few weeks to steel myself to face down the SAHM brigade on their turf.

Here here. Not only should parents stay out of their kids’ 9-3 lives, the kids NEED them to stay out. We are raising generations of kids absurdly dependent on their parents and worse, parents who are absurdly dependent on their children. Parents, your children can get along fine without you for a whole bunch of hours during the day. And kids, if I hear one more of you say that your parents are your best friends I may lose my lunch.

I feel for all of you who are suffering under these constraints. And Judith is absolutely right that on the other side of the ocean the guilt is, if not nonexistent, much diminished. I am an American living in Italy with an Italian husband. We have two children who are both in Italian schools. In the public school system, Italian mothers who work are held in high esteem for that activity and pre- and post-school hours are provided to make it even more possible for them . Clearly, these hours exist not just to assist the investment banker mommies, but the house-cleaner mommies as well. Work is work, and whether you have to do it, or choose to do it, is not an issue; the help is there.

Further, public “schooling” begins at pre-school. There may be difficulty getting a place, but priority is given correctly to the people who most need it. Others, generally, if they can afford it, are already sending their children to private pre-schools. There is a belief here that children need to be socialized early, and I have to say, that I have seen marvelous benefits of this early, gentle and sensitive schooling. My children, at young ages, have friends, play easily with others, and don’t get all their entertainment from me. They get it from other children. They have, even at tender ages, their own lives with speeds, rhythms and relationships appropriate to their age. They seem very happy; both of them ask to go to school in the morning, and my older daughter has proclaimed in no uncertain terms that she would prefer to go to school in the summer than to go on vacation. I’m not saying that all Italian children like school, but it is by and large a “happy” and workable situation.

In addition, there is little chatter about parents who are there and parents who are not. There are, of course, several small scheduled events during the year, but it isn’t a heavy burden, and I’ve not heard disparaging talk about parents who couldn’t attend. Italians keep family ties strong, so it’s just as likely that grandparents and nannies come in addition to parents or as proxies.

I completely agree but just try to get the teacher’s union to agree to events on evenings and weekends! Of course when the shoe is on the other foot it’s a different story. My daughter had a high school teacher who took weeks to grade homework and papers – if she returned them at all. Her excuse? She had three kids and didn’t have the time. Either we transform every workplace into a humane environment which allows for the fact that work and personal lives need to co-exist or we change the schools to reflect the needs of society at large. How about both?

Have to disagree on this with you. I live in Denmark where the level of parent involvement expected for school-age kids is enourmous, and emphasis in the ‘socialization’ part of the educational experience is paramount. Here there is even a parent committe, in every class, that plans parents-kids arrangements throughout the year. My husband and I have a hard time keeping up with our jobs and school demands. However, there are all kinds of flexible conditions on both our jobs that give us some possibilities to attend for this time without the guilt. The solution in my opinion is to have expect job conditions that are more conducive to parenting embracing fully the responsibilities that come with it. Not the other way around, as you seem to propose, expecting that schools take full charge of our kids so that we have little involvement on what they do or not during those hours. I would say then there has to be compromises both ways, but parent guilt will possibly never disappear, but that is another issue.

Hear, hear. I agree wholeheartly. Trying to maintain family time as well as adequate work performance is hard enough without the pressure to squeeze school events into work time, then trying to catch up on work when we ought to be sleeping. My daughter’s school had no fewer than 4 morning-going-into-afternoon events in the last week of classes. For moms with “fluid schedules” that translates to a unrecoverable loss of productivity and loss of quality family time as well.

You describe the situation at the K-12 private school where I currently teach and from which my own kids graduated . When my kids were young and I was a stay-at-home mom, I attended all the daytime functions while my husband went to his job. There was never a question about him missing work for a class play. I was always amazed at the number of professional men who showed up as if this function was right up there with a board meeting. So the question is: Were they forging bonds for a great parent-child relationship or helping to create an unhealthy child-centered world? Having been on both sides, as a parent and a teacher, I agree that the adminstration should remove the obligation and find other ways to connect parents and school.

As a working mom I could not agree more. I find it intrusive and unnecessary to have events during the day in which parents have to take time out for “activities” while the kids are at school or camp. For the 30 minutes required it can be, for some, hours out of the office. But mostly, it is completely unfair to the kids whose parents can not be there. The world has changed and the amount of double income families is more common. I think that the educational systems, at the very least, should take this into account more seriously these days. I have the flexibility to try & take time to go to my kids school, but it can be disruptive to a tight schudule and hurtful when I can’t make it happen.

growing up in brookline ma thirty or forty years ago my children’s public school kept events parents were meant to attend to a minimum and my children understood that their professor father could usually fit his schedule to be there and their driven architect mother could not; this was a fact of life and there were no complaints. other than that we rarely saw them until they appeared at the dinner table having left school on foot with all the other neighborhood children and participated at random play, games or who knows what devious activity, until hunger drove them to the parental scene.

Bravo! My husband and I are both teachers, and we plan parent events at night–once or twice per year. We would love our kids’ teachers to do the same. Then we wouldn’t have to leave our students (your kids) with substitutes for hours while we try to be good parents.

Among my favorite school-aged activities: the school Mother’s Day Tea. Happy Mother’s Day! Here’s a big ladle of guilt for all you working mommies who won’t be there! (Her grandmother usually had the day off and subbed.) Nor do schools think about the effect on children whose parents can’t come because they are ill, or overseas, or dead.

My daughter is in college now, and managed to grow up without my constant presence in the classroom, library, PTA functions, and Halloween parades.

My experience is that when students are struggling, 99 percent of all teachers blame the home environment. A parent who can’t show up for functions is an automatic target.

Pupils need to own their school experience without the constant presence of their parents. And schools need to own the learning experience without looking around for someone else to blame.

As for camps–they just want to impress the person who pays the bills. Visiting is really only appropriate for sleepaway camps and only for subtly showing parents who much their kids have matured away from them. And that’s the key here: kids mature when they are given time away from their parents.

Judith – I completely agree! We are americans who are half way through a two-year stint in Canada. When our eleven year old son started school last fall at the local public school, my husband and I went with him to the first day – and were surprised to find out that we were not welcome in the classroom – the complete opposite of the situation at our home in Oregon. In fact, we didn’t even meet our son’s teacher for three weeks, when we – along with other parents – were invited to a “parent’s evening”. The attitude of the school was “this is your child’s life, let them take charge”. We think it is wonderful – and our son has thrived in a situtation where he, and not his parents, is in charge.

Here’s your Amen! Kids need some healthy separation from hovering parents. One can be “there” for one’s children without being joined at the hip. We work. It’s not a bad thing for our kids to see that we sometimes must make hard, but right choices about where we can spend our 9 to 3 time. The right choice isn’t the happy one, necessarily. It’s a fact of reality, however, that reality disappoints.

Participation in school generated activities for parents is only one facet of this relationship. Knowing what is going on in the school is another. I learned how important that is during the first months of my eldest child’s kindergarten. Subsequent years for him and his siblings proved the need. You owe your child oversight of his 9 to 3 ordeal. He will learm more about peer socializing and dealing with authoritative adults with your informed guidence than by trial and error on his own.

My late in life participation as a school board member served only to reinforce this stand. My questions to parents about their decisions about school is whether they know what is going on there, who their children are associating with, and what may be troubling them on a day to day basis.

Do you really want your children to associate with those people and have to deal with the culture of such an distorted institution? The village that raises a child is a complete village with full interaction every day, not a regimented jailhouse with little freedom of choice.

Parents, cut the cord! Let your child own his or her own schoolwork, sports, drama, clubs. Find some other outlet for yourself besides hovering over your child to make sure he or she is happy. Do it now before your child is a hopeless, hapless young adult, as in the following situation:

Woman on phone: Prof X’s class is way too hard and he is far too demanding. The number of assignments is ridiculous and he is too critical on grading papers. He never praises the good parts, only points out the errors.

Me (Chair of Academic Dept at a private liberal arts college): Which of his classes are you taking?

Woman on phone: Oh, I’m calling on behalf of my daughter.

Me: Your daughter?

Woman on phone: Yes, she has been calling me all week about how hard his class is. She is in tears about it.

Me: may I ask if you went to college?

Woman on phone: Yes.

Me: And did you have your mom call professors who were too hard or did you deal with college on your own?

Woman on phone, indignant: Well, times are different, parents nowadays are more involved.

Me: yes, unfortunately. There is a federal law that forbids me from discussing any student’s academic progress without his or her written permission.

Woman on phone, angry: I am not asking you to discuss her academic performance, I am asking you to tell Prof X to lighten up.

Me: Mom, maybe you need to lighten up. Your daughter is legally – if not emotionally – a grown woman. If she has issues with Prof X she needs to meet with him or with me personally, not have you call. She should be dealing with this on her own.

Woman on Phone, furious: You are obviously one of those career women who does not understand the maternal bond!

Me: Actually I have three children, all college grads, the youngest just this year.

Woman on phone, seething: My daughter is heading for a breakdown, and your attitude is not helping! We’ll just see about this! Click.

Mom complained about Prof X and about me to the president, vice president and dean. Daughter got a C in the course and changed her major. Now she is some other department’s problem. I wonder what mom will do when daughter has her first bad review at her first job.

We live in the Vllage of Roslyn, where every mother takes the competition of getting face time in front of the school’s teachers and administrators as if it were an Olympic event. There is no community that compares to the level of dependency that exists between their children and parents.
It continues beyond the senior year and into the first job, apartment, life partner and beyond. Its the mothers, they’re crazy, like stepford onlly worse.
We should be fair to include Jericho, Great Neck and the rest of the Long Island fashion towns.

I really couldn’t agree with you more; why do we have this distorted notion that it’s the parents’ duty to be involved with every moment of their school-age children’s lives. We have created this absurd level of pressure for ourselves and have created children who have become emotionally dependent on their parents and who are constantly seeking parental approval and attention.

seen from abroad (france) the point is NOT parents involvement in itself (though it is indeed a major part of the problem) but the type of culture and media used to “air” it. in most ( ok a lot) american ( and now anglo-saxon) fictions the dad has to give excuses for having promessed to come to whatever kid activity and not showing up. which translates as , parents have got to make promesses (absolute) and hold them…this is not real life, in real life you do not make promesses, you’ll say you’ll do your best or that you’ll try and if you do not show up your kid is really not happy, but hey that is part of growing up.
it does link with the subject of extra curricular activities and parents involvement bt it all comes from the fact that fictions (movies, tv, series tec..) use a manichean vision of the world where everyone should aim to please the society ( in this case in mean micro society, neibghors etc..) and our kids learn living in society with scale of value

Bad news for parents of young children: Just wait until your kids are in high school and the PPPPC forms (Post-Prom Party Plannning Committee) and you’re asked to join it. High school booster clubs are now run (by kids? What decade are you trapped in?) like corporations. Join these groups and attend monthly meetings, or learn how to ignore scowls cast your way when you show up for school events. In other words, parental involvement is terminal.

Good news for parents of young children: When your kids go off to college you can join the parents’ association — or you can get on with your life, guilt-free. My oldest son will be a college senior this year. At my first parents’ weekend 3 years ago, did I bolt from the room when the college president concluded his welcoming remarks and asked parents to stay put and learn more about the parents’ association? I’m pretty sure I didn’t knock any over in my race for the nearest exit.

When my twins graduate from high school next year I will feel that the nightmare of parental involvement is finally over. Hang in there, fellow slacker parents.

Finally, somebody speaks up about the unreasonable expectations our society has for parents. At work we are supposed to work as if we have no families, and at school, we are to pretend we have no jobs. As Judith mentioned, parental involvement is such a class marker in our society. Who has the autonomy to schedule their hours freely?
I would caution Judith from glorifying the European situation (and remember Europe is not a culturally unified country, but a continent). We lived in Germany when my son was 3 and it was a nightmare to get one of the “free” Kindergarten spots all parents are promised. In the state we lived, only 2% of all 3-year olds had a spot and we ran from one end of town to the other to find a spot. The care we found turned out to be mediocre, but there were no private options. Having money does not insulate you in Germany; rather the belief is that everybody should suffer through the same substandard system. Since many mothers do not work there, the level of maternal involvement was very high (and expected). Children were loudly pitied if their mothers couldn’t come to an event.
Maybe speaking up about the expectations of parents will help. So far, I found my son’s teachers here in the States very receptive to concerns.

The oppression of parents is so bad I ended up with the equivalent of Saturday morning detention for not showing up to my youngest’s back to school night in his senior year of high school. Been to 4 of them for his older brother and 3 for him. Wasn’t like I didn’t know what was going on at the school.

For that grevious sin parents who cut had to show up on a Saturday morning to see a video of the presentation. Failure to appear meant junior couldn’t do activities.

The upside was sitting through the video after “attendence” was taken having the sense of being transported back for a couple of hours to being a high schooler.

In addition to getting parents out of the 9-3 school day, how about also looking at parental involvement in all of those organized sports activities. I grew up(sorry for the “in my day” comment) without my parents being involved in sports, we played in school yards and learned how to negotiate, not always elegantly, with each other and how to problem solve without Mom and Dad. We also didn’t have the anxiety associated with Mom and Dad watching cheering and at times seemingly more invested in our winning than we were. It seems to be the trick is not detaching from the kids but knowing when and how to be there and when to step back and be a consultant wehn they need us.

In our community, the daytime PTA schedule is driven by stay-at-home parents (usually mothers) who brazenly tell each other (and everyone else) how superior they are for choosing not to work. Asking them for an evening activity gets you a cold stare (if you’re a working father) or an in-your-face put-down (if you’re a working mother). Teachers collaborate simply because this group is on the scene while working parents aren’t around to defend themselves.

Amen! Great blog. Great postings. This topic resonates with me. And I am grateful to see so many other parents (and teachers)responding thoughtfully. They’re spot on.
As a more involved father than mine ever was with my children’s extracurricular activities, I am mystified by school administration expectations that we leave our jobs during the day to immerse ourselves even more in our children’s daily lives.

Judith Warner, thank you for speaking out on this issue, and, indeed, for inspiring me to feel less guilty about the few school-day functions I am forced to miss. Admittedly, I’m sure the mothers are made by our culture to feel more of that guilt anyway.

It’s long past time for contemporary parents to shrug off the yoke of misplaced guilt. Our children today are so saturated with parental involvement that I and many of my friends – boomers, I’m speaking of – have observed that youths lack substantially even the skills to organize their own pickup games and ad hoc activities. So much has to be pre-packaged for them by adult intervention and supervision. The range of wholesome spontanteity of youth activity seems so terribly constrained compared to when I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. It does not take perpetual physical hovering for a parent to be ‘engaged’ with his or her child’s life. Now and then is fine and desired; but for parents to be expected to attend every last event and activity, lest they be counted neglectful, disregards one thing that children have always needed to get out of childhood. That is a sense of having their own world, reasonably safe and secure, to enjoy and make-believe in, even while they have the palpable models of their parents and other adults – having their own adult activities, responsibilities, and even pleasures – to which the children can aspire as they grow up. It’s nature’s intent that parents provide a beacon for their children to move gradually forward into adulthood more than it is that parents constantly themselves get down in the sandbox and pretend that they are just bigger, grey-haired children.
Come to think of it, the WWII generation, the parents of the boomers, didn’t have it too terribly wrong afterall even though they are often accused of having been ‘aloof’.